A Long Time Dead (23 page)

Still walking on tiptoe – though given that Lily Hanson was retching so loudly, he doubted she'd have heard an elephant stampede – he began opening the other doors.

There was a large, palatial bedroom, which Douglas Coutes must have shared with Lily before her fall from favour – and to which he now, no doubt, took his newer conquests, with little regard for how it must make his poor neglected housekeeper feel.

There was a second bedroom, which had so few personal touches in it that he assumed it was reserved for guests.

And there was a third bedroom – much smaller and meaner than the others – which stank of alcohol, and served not only as a refuge for the inebriated Lily, but also as a constant reminder of the rejection and humiliation she had been made to endure at the hands of Douglas Coutes.

He continued checking out the rooms, keeping one ear cocked for signs that the housekeeper had recovered enough to emerge from the bathroom.

There was a large kitchen, and a small sitting room. There was a second bathroom.

It was all so ordinary, he told himself – so opulent, yet conventional – that he was beginning to think the whole expedition was nothing but a complete waste of time.

And then, he reached the room at the far end of the corridor. It was the biggest one in the entire apartment – and easily the most interesting and self-indulgent.

This was Coutes's study. There was no doubt about that. There was a huge teak desk at one end of it, and a full-sized snooker table at the other. Two pieces of modern sculpture flanked the big window which looked out on to the street, and the expanse of polished parquet between the desk and snooker table was broken up by several expensive oriental carpets.

But it was the walls which immediately attracted Rutter's interest. Almost every inch of available space on them had been taken up with glass-fronted display cases.

The cases were works of art in themselves, delicately constructed from the finest woods, by the most skilled of craftsmen. And they were full of knives. Hundreds of them!

Some of the knives, Rutter recognized – a Fairbairn-Sykes Commando knife, a Bowie knife, an Indian Khukri dagger.

Others were new to him, though he could make an informed guess as to their origins – that one a Bronze Age dagger, that one a Medieval dagger, and the one in the corner something Japanese.

But that still left a fair number of exhibits about which he had no clue whatsoever.

He heard the toilet flush, and hurriedly returned to the lounge. By the time Lily appeared again, he was standing by one of the bookcases, studying the titles with apparent fascination.

‘Had a bit of tummy trouble,' Lily Hanson said weakly. ‘Hope that won't put you off.'

‘No,' Rutter said, setting his face into a mask of interest and concern, and turning to look at her. ‘It won't put me off at all. That kind of thing can could happen to anybody.'

She looked less green than she had earlier, and, after puking up her load, had obviously made some effort to repair her make-up.

‘A drink,' she said. ‘That's what we could both do with now. A good stiff drink.'

‘Are you sure that's such a good idea?' Rutter asked.

‘Why wouldn't it be?' Lily asked, exhibiting a flash of that aggression that habitual drunks are often prone to.

‘Well, I just don't think it's entirely wise, given your tummy trouble,' Rutter said.

‘A little drink is
exactly
what I need,' Lily Hanson told him. ‘A little drink will just set me up for the frolics that we've been promising each other ever since we left the pub.'

She walked across to a large cabinet set into the wall. She seemed a little less shaky than she had been earlier.

‘Are you sticking to whisky?' she asked.

‘Might as well,' Rutter replied. He waited until she was concentrating on mixing the drinks, then added, ‘I have to say that with all the security you've got installed here, it must have taken some very determined burglars indeed to even
consider
breaking in.'

Lily froze. ‘Burglars?' she asked warily. ‘Who said anything about burglars?'

‘You did,' Rutter told her. ‘Don't you remember?'

‘No, I'm not sure that I do.'

‘When you were disabling the alarms, you told me that you'd been broken into.'

‘I said that?' Lily asked doubtfully. She shook her head, as if attempting to clear it. ‘Suppose I must have done, if you know all about it.'

‘You said the burglars got past two of the alarms, but were caught out by the third,' Rutter said, pushing his luck.

‘That's right, I did say that,' Lily agreed.

‘So where was the third alarm situated? It can't have been with the others, can it?'

‘No. It's attached to display cases in Douglas's … in my … study,' Lily said. ‘Don't want to talk about burglars any more. Upsets me.'

‘Then we won't,' Rutter promised.

‘Drinks are done,' Lily said. ‘Take a seat.'

Rutter considered the sofa for a second, then selected the armchair opposite. Lily looked disappointed, but made no comment.

They took a preliminary sip of their drinks, then Lily said, ‘You are going to take me to bed later, aren't you?'

After all the loneliness – all the despair – it was tempting to say that he would, but Rutter found himself shaking his head.

‘You're not?' Lily asked.

‘No, I'm not,' Rutter agreed.

Lily's jaw quivered, and tears appeared in her eyes. ‘It's because I'm ugly, isn't it?' she wailed.

‘You're not ugly at all,' Rutter replied.

And he meant it. Somewhere, beneath all that make-up and all the excesses, there lay a pretty face – a face it was still possible to salvage.

‘Then, if you don't think I'm ugly, why
won't
you sleep with me?' Lily demanded.

‘It wouldn't be fair to take advantage of you, not when you're not feeling well.'

‘I'll tell you what's fair and what isn't,' Lily said, almost screaming the words. ‘I'm the one who decides what's fair!'

Rutter stood. ‘I really think I'd better go,' he said.

Lily looked up at him pathetically. ‘Please don't leave me!' she implored him.

‘My staying wouldn't be good for either of us,' Rutter told her as he walked towards the door.

‘You're just like Douglas!' Lily screeched after him, as he stepped into the corridor. ‘You're just like all the men I've ever known. You're nothing but a complete bloody bastard!'

Perhaps she was right, Rutter thought, as he headed towards the lift. Or perhaps, by walking away as he had done, he had at last begun his own long climb back to decency and honour.

A
be Birnbaum – ex-GI driver and now major player in the tri-state dry-cleaning world – was about to get ready for bed when he heard a loud pounding on his trailer door.

‘Who's there?' he asked.

‘Woodend,' replied the furious voice from outside.

Birnbaum unlocked the door. Looking down at his visitor, the thought came to him that although he'd always thought of Woodend as a big man, he'd never known quite
how
big he could be when he was angry.

‘Is there a problem, Charlie?' he asked.

‘Don't “Charlie” me,' Woodend said, pushing Birnbaum back into the trailer, and immediately following him. ‘Sit down, you bastard. I want some answers, and I want them now. An' you're goin' to give them to me – even if I have to break every bone in your body to get them.'

Birnbaum sat, and realized he hadn't been quite as frightened as this for a long while – that the last time his bowels had turned to water, as they were doing now, was during the Normandy Landings.

‘Why did Robert Kineally and Mary Parkinson break up?' Woodend demanded.

‘They didn't,' Birnbaum confessed. ‘Everything was fine before he went to London – and by time he came back, she was dead.'

‘But he got a letter from her, didn't he?'

‘Yes, he got a letter.'

‘An' what did she say in it?'

‘She told him she'd slept with Coutes. She said she was so ashamed of herself that she couldn't bear to go on living any more.'

‘And what did Kineally do when he'd read it?'

‘What would you have expected him to do? What would you have done yourself, in his place? He went out looking for Coutes.'

Kineally confronts Coutes in the Dun Cow's skittle alley.

‘Mary's dead!' he says.

‘I heard,' Coutes replies. ‘I'm very sorry.'

‘It's all your fault.'

‘My fault?'

‘You seduced her – you son-of-a-bitch – and she couldn't live with the shame of it.'

Coutes laughs. ‘I assure you, there was no seduction involved. She was at least as willing as I was. And if every woman I'd slept with killed herself because of it, the countryside would be strewn with dead bodies.'

This is too much to take, and Kineally lunges at him. And it is only when it is already too late to stop himself that he sees the short iron bar in Coutes's hands, and realizes that this is exactly what Coutes wanted him to do – what all the taunting was designed to
make
him do.

The first blow strikes him on the arm, and knocks him off balance. Two more blows hit home – one to the side and one to the leg – as he is going down. And then he is lying on the ground.

In incredible pain!

Fighting for breath!

And through the pain, he can still hear Coutes's voice.

‘As soon as I learned that Mary had topped herself, I knew it would come to this,' Coutes is saying. ‘Anybody else would have shrugged it off – would have said that if she'd been sleeping around, she wasn't worth grieving over. But not you, you stupid bastard. You'll keep coming back at me as long as you're able to. So I'm just going to have to make sure you're
not
able to, aren't I?'

There is no mistaking what the words mean – no possibility of misinterpretation. Even through the pain, Kineally realizes that Coutes intends to kill him.

And there is nothing he can do about it!

He hears a new voice. Not as near as Coutes's voice, but not that far away, either.

‘Captain Kineally? Captain Kineally? Where are you, sir? Are you in the goddam skittle alley?'

And suddenly Coutes is no longer there.

‘He was in one hell of a state when I found him in that skittle alley,' Birnbaum said. ‘I didn't know how to deal with him myself, so I put him into the jeep and brought him back to the camp for the paramedics to take a look at him. They did their best to patch him up, but it wasn't an easy job, because his shoulder was dislocated and three of his ribs were broken.'

‘What a touching story,' Woodend said, in a voice as menacing as a cut-throat razor. ‘Truly touching. And do you know, I'd almost be inclined to believe it – if I hadn't spent more than an hour this morning listening to you feed me an entirely different load of horse shit!'

‘Believe me, this isn't horse shit!' Abe Birnbaum pleaded. ‘Believe me, because – I promise you, Charlie – this time I'm telling you the truth.'

‘Special Agent Grant has had a whole vault full of documents shipped out from the States. Did you know that?'

‘I … I guess I saw some cardboard boxes being—'

‘And among those documents are all the medical records for Haverton Camp – so they should contain the details of the treatment given to Robert Kineally, after he was attacked, shouldn't they?'

‘I—'

‘I'm goin' to ask you a question, Abe, an' I want you to think very carefully before you answer it. An' the question is this – if I look for those records, will I find them?'

Birnbaum looked down at the floor of the trailer. ‘No, you won't,' he mumbled.

‘And
why
won't I?'

‘Because nothing went through the official channels. The paramedics were buddies of mine, and they didn't make any record of the treatment.'

‘How very convenient!' Woodend said. ‘An' would you like to tell me why you did things that way?'

‘Because that's what Captain Kineally wanted.'

‘Because that's what Captain Kineally wanted! Of course that was the reason! It's common sense, when you think about it!' Woodend paused. ‘Tell me, Abe, just how stupid do you think I am?'

‘It's all true, Charlie! I promise you it is. The Captain said that if it got to be common knowledge that he'd been fighting with a British officer, both him and Coutes would be arrested. And that was the last thing he wanted.'

‘I can understand him not wanting to be arrested himself, but after what Coutes had done to him, he surely wanted to see that bastard behind bars.'

‘You don't understand him,' Birnbaum said.

‘Then explain him to me, so I will.'

‘He said he didn't want Coutes to be punished by anybody else. He said he wanted them to be both to remain at liberty, so he could get a second crack at Coutes himself – and this time he wasn't going to take no sucker punches.'

‘So what was the point of all the lies that you told to me an' Special Agent Grant?' Woodend asked sceptically.

‘I lied because I loved the guy,' Abe Birnbaum said. ‘I loved him like a brother. I loved him like I loved my own father. And I didn't want nobody thinking he was a coward – even if he was.'

‘Hang on, you've lost me there completely,' Woodend admitted.

‘When I got up the next morning, the jeep was missing,' Abe Birnbaum explained. ‘I should have reported it, but I didn't.'